Old Jeff Davis Hospital gets long-term protection

The former Jefferson Davis Hospital has been named a Protected Historic Landmark, which means it will stand in perpetuity.

The former Jefferson Davis Hospital has been named a Protected...

For years it stood rotting, a hulking shell of its former self, clearly visible from the freeway near downtown, windowless, overgrown, forgotten.

You could tell it had once been a building of some substance - three stories tall with a red brick and stone veneer, rows of tall, double-hung windows, a central portico with fluted columns, standing on what passes for a small hill in Houston with a grand view of the city's skyscrapers.

But it was obvious to all zipping by that this was yet another significant building in Houston's history being left in the dust of a city racing at full speed to the future.

Not anymore.

Related

Last week, the old Jefferson Davis Hospital capped a remarkable comeback from the brink of extinction when it was designated a Protected Historic Landmark by the Houston City Council, which is about as protected as a building can get in these parts.

Designed in the neoclassical style by architect W. A. Dowdy, it was completed in 1924 by the city and run jointly with Harris County for 13 years as the first centralized public hospital in Houston to treat indigent patients.

And because it had been built on top of a city cemetery dating back to the 1840s which contained, among others, the remains of Confederate soldiers, it was named after their president, supposedly to appease the families of said soldiers.

In 1939, the county opened a new hospital, also called Jefferson Davis, on Allen Parkway and the old facility started its gradual decline into ruin - from psychiatric hospital, to juvenile detention ward, to food stamp distribution center, to records storage center, to abandoned building.

Translator

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

The owner at the time, and thus to my mind the one responsible for its condition, was Harris County, which showed no interest in even trying to resuscitate it. All the county did was fence it off and walk away.

And there it sat for more than 20 years.

It gained a reputation for being haunted, inhabited by the spirts of those buried beneath it, and maybe it still is. But if it is, those spectres now live cheek by jowl with the real live human beings that currently occupy the building.

Back from the dead

The old hospital started coming back from the dead in 2004 when it was bought from the county by the Avenue Community Development Corp. (commonly known as Avenue CDC), a nonprofit that focuses on affordable housing, particularly in the historic Sixth and First Wards.

Avenue CDC teamed up with Artspace Projects Inc., of Minneapolis to renovate the building, turning it into low-income loft and studio space for artists. It is now known as the Elder Street Lofts, although it is still widely referred to as the Old Jeff Davis Hospital.

Historical marker

It was designated a state historic landmark in 2009, which allowed for an historical marker to be erected at the site, but offered little long-term protection. It also was listed as a State Archaeological Landmark in 1995, which meant that before any construction could commence on the site, it had to be surveyed to ensure that none of the thousands of graves there would be disturbed.

The governments of Houston and Harris County are not renowned for aggressively protecting the city's history. Anyone remember the mid-1980s, when the old Bethje-Lang building on Milam that housed Warren's Inn and Red's Shoe Shine Parlor was demolished in the middle of the night, without the necessary permits, to make way for the monstrosity that is now the Market Square Garage?

But that has changed in recent years, with Houston enacting increasingly restrictive laws to preserve its historic buildings. The designation by the city of Protected Historic Landmark actually has some teeth, since that designation is transferred in perpetuity with the title of the building.

Does that mean the Old Jeff Davis Hospital will now be with us in perpetuity? It seems so.

"We're very excited about it," says Mary Lawler, the executive director of Avenue CDC. "The goal of the project from the beginning was to preserve the building and provide low-income housing."

It is, indeed, heartening that a small, but important slice of Houston's history now appears to have a secure future.

That mild euphoria, however, should be tempered by the reality that the Old Jeff Davis Hospital, a county-owned treasure, would have rotted away if a private enterprise had not stepped up to save it.